


i don't care if heaven won't take me back

by gingergenower



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Injury, F/M, Gun Violence, Moral Ambiguity, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Spoilers, Thriller, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 05:49:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9164836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingergenower/pseuds/gingergenower
Summary: Cassian's compromised and kidnapped on a routine mission, taken by a crime mob working with the Empire. The Alliance orders Jyn to cut and run because too many lives would be lost failing to save him.As is her nature, she goes rogue.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> just reiterating the warnings- this gets hella violent hella quick.

> I don’t care if heaven won’t take me back  
>  I’ll throw away my faith, babe, just to keep you safe  
>  Don’t you know you’re everything I have?  
>  -Angel with a Shotgun, The Cab

  


**Outer Rim Territories, the Albarrio System**

Jyn presses a blue button on the console. A gear clunks into place and it hums with static. “Fulcrum, this is shuttle R8-14. Please respond.” Cassian’s supposed to reach out every day, but he didn’t make contact for the first three days out of wariness of being watched, so she doesn’t worry he’s a few hours late. 

Recruitment is a measured subtlety, an understanding of other people Jyn can’t grasp. She told him as much when he received the assignment on Albarrio, but he just laughed and told her it’s one of the better assignments he gets. She offered herself as his point of contact with the Alliance, and Cassian warned her she might not want it- waiting in a ship that has to appear empty for potentially weeks can drive a person a little mad- but she didn’t like the idea of his leaving for that long while she tried to focus on something else.

On the other hand, she thinks, bare feet propped up on the dashboard and slumped so low down in the pilot’s seat she’s horizontal, perhaps he had a point.

She shifts, pulling her sagging tank top strap back onto her shoulder, and closes her eyes to doze. The ship’s warm without the air con and it’s lulling her into sleep. Chewing a hangnail, she hums along with the static.

A murmur, voices from the tarmac outside the ship- she freezes, listening. There’s no risking someone seeing her through the windshield. The voices get louder, and she throws herself off the chair, smacking onto the metal grill floor.

They’re walking around the ship- a few of them, she’s sure- and Jyn crawls towards the shut blast door of the cockpit. Her boots and weapons belt are at the end of her makeshift, unmade bed. She can picture where she truncheon is, and her blaster.

Her hand stretches up and presses the button to release the blast door, and she’s half-through the doorway when the voices come from directly outside the cargo bay’s door. Something on the ship pops open- Jyn winces- and they’re so close she can hear them talking. 

“Think you can do it?”

“Think you can shut up?”

“For the love of- shut up! Both of you! Get on with it!” The last voice rings of impatience.

Jyn swallows, eyes darting to her blaster, but it’s ten foot away and she hasn’t the time. The cargo door clunks, and starts to lower itself down; they’re hotwiring the thing.

Throwing herself back into the cockpit, back pressed against the doorframe and legs tucked to her chest, she’s around the corner and out of their sight. Swallowing, she pats the pockets of her combat trousers down and finds a three inch blade. She pulls it out, and breathes slow, listening.

They board, slow and careless. One of them kicks something over. “Didn’t figure him for a slob.”

Jyn smothers a hand over her mouth and nose so she doesn’t makes a noise. _Cassian_.

“How much do you reckon he’s actually got?” A storage compartment door creaks open, but she knows they’re empty.

“Probably not much.”

“I had no idea this was even here, did you?”

“No. Rebel scum.”

Footsteps towards the cockpit make Jyn flip the knife in her hand, a closed fist to stab down.

A man ducks his head to get into the cockpit he’s so tall, but he doesn’t even give a cursory glance to his surroundings, blaster tucked in his belt. He leans over the console, back to Jyn.

Rising slow, quiet, Jyn uses the cover of the other two discussing the ship’s scrapyard potential to breathe.

Two strides forward and she’s buried the knife in the side of his neck and jerked it out. Blood sprays everywhere and he collapses over the console- she jumps over him to yank the lever that closes the cargo door.

She whips her knife at the other two and tugs the dying man’s blaster free of his belt, getting three shots off while she ducks for cover.

“Shit-!”

Speaking gives away his location- behind the crate nearest the blast door- so when he risks a look Jyn’s shot catches him in the face, and he crumples out of sight. The last one alive swears.

Back pressed to her cover, she’s staring at the man she knifed. His blood’s inching across the floor, but he’s still twitching.

Damaged wires hiss in the cargo bay, spitting sparks where her shots missed her target, but it’s not enough to mask the sound of his heavy boots creeping across the deck, tucked around the doorframe. She drops, slamming against the ground, and he puts three shots where her head just was- she shoots the blaster out of his hands and he staggers back, shocked. She blasts a knee out from underneath him.

He falls backwards, landing heavy on his back and he’s in enough shock that Jyn can scramble to her feet and grab her weapons belt before he even notices it’s next to him.

Yanking the strap tight around her waist, she keeps hold of the blaster already in her hand and points it at his head.

“Who do you work for?” He stares up at her, blank, so she kicks leg and his whole body convulses as he screams. “What happened to Fulcrum?”

“I don’t know-“

Her lip twitches. Cassian’s done some terrible things for the rebellion, and she’s pretty sure he likes recruitment because he’s less likely to have to kill someone doing it, and all Jyn’s ever done is try to survive. She’s amused how it’s only now she realises what she’d do for Cassian.

She points the blaster at his other knee, and the man presses his lips together, trying not to whimper.

“You were talking about him a minute ago.”

“We weren’t-”

She pulls the trigger, and that leg’s so mangled she’s sure he’ll lose it.

“- _dead he’s dead_ -!”

She stills, but she knows Cassian, she can feel him in her bones. She’d feel that loss. “He’s not dead.”

“He will be-”

“Where is he?”

“Kiran will kill him-”

Kiran Jade, a crime lord with Empire loyalties. “Your boss?”

The man bites down on his lip, sweating with the effort of making no noise, and she wants to ask more, press for more, but he’d probably give her false information. Her last shot hits him square in the chest, and he dies with his eyes open.

The spare blaster tucked in the back of her trousers, she finds her knife on the floor and goes back to the cockpit, heaving the dead man off the console. Hands shaking, she struggles to retune the radio, and she wonders what’s wet underfoot until she glances down and realises she’s standing in inch-deep blood.

Forcing herself to look away, she sets the frequency and picks up the mic. “This is R8-14, mission designation 9721, requesting immediate backup, operative Fulcrum is missing, repeat, operative Fulcrum is missing. I believe he’s been made.”

She smacks the button to transmit the message and dives back down the ship, blood-slick feet skidding over the floor and tripping over twisted limbs. Wiping the worst of the blood off with her bedsheets, she yanks her boots on but doesn’t lace them up because the radio buzzes.

“ _Mission designation 9721, this is Yavin 4. We need more details_.”

Jyn picks up. “A crime lord knows operative Fulcrum is a rebel and three of his guns found me on the ship. As far as I can tell, he’s currently alive and in their hands. I need help extracting him.”

There’s a pause, and she knots up her boots.

“ _Be advised, 9721, Fulcrum is lost. Please return to your base of operations immediately_.”

“He’s alive.” She stares at the console, and repeats herself into the mic. “He needs us.”

“ _He’s gone. Return to your base of operations_.”

Jyn presses the button to speak, but says nothing, and removes her finger again.

“ _9721, please confirm your status_.”

Glancing left, her eyes fix on a box labelled ‘spare parts’. It holds blasters, grenades and Cassian’s rifle. 

He was going to kill her father with that rifle. They’ve never talked about it since, one of the few things they’ve left unsaid, but he died either way and Cassian looks at her sometimes as though he’s seeing Papa’s ghost. He doesn’t need reminding of everything he’s done; she thinks if she saves him, she might never tell him everything she’s about to do.

She practically twists the radio dial off she pulls it out of sync of the Alliance frequency so fast. It hisses, all static, and she reaches for the box.

***

Her leather pouch holds a few grenades, A180 rounds in a belt strapped over her chest and covered by a loose scarf, and the hilt of the knife in her boot presses into her calf as she slips out of the hanger. She shuts the door fast, the men’s bodies still littering the ship because she hasn’t the time to move them, and pulls apart their hotwiring as she passes it, shoving the wires back into its panel.

Almost certain they were petty thieves, scavengers, not directly working for Kiran Jade, she hopes there might be a few hours’ leeway before anyone notices they’re gone.  
The ship’s parked in a long term storage hanger for ships with security that sleeps half the time. Cassian picked it because he’s used it for quick escapes before, so she walks out and no one blinks at her.

Her boredom on board the ship for the last week is something she’s grateful for- so well familiarised with the maps of the city, she finds the spot Cassian last reported from in under half an hour. He mentioned a Vahla named Aran interested in the cause, a weapons manufacturer that hangs around a nearby bar, and there are a few bars but only one Vahla.

Nearly two foot taller than Jyn and dark grey skin dusty with the street’s sand, he sits alone. Jyn takes the seat next to him, paying for his drink. He raises an eyebrow at her, but she doesn’t order her own drink.

She leans in. “Fulcrum.”

“Who?”

Jyn’s hands ball into fists, but keeps her voice low. “I’m not playing games.”

“Neither am I. I don’t make the habit of trusting humans.”

“You trusted him.” Enough to admit to rebellious tendencies, enough to ask what being an undercover operative in the Empire would require.

Aran considers her. “I trusted his conviction. “I have nothing of the sort to trust in you.”

The longer she sits still, the longer Cassian’s in the hands of the enemy and the more likely he’ll die before she can save him. “Do you know anything?”

“You’re quite desperate, aren’t you?” he says, playful.

It takes everything in her not to blast his brain out of his head.

“The light stirs in you, but you’re quite dark, my dear.” His smile sets her over the edge. 

Force-sensitive and he’s still a waste of a rebel. She stands. “The light will die with him.”

She leaves with her head down, considering waiting outside, but he probably knows little and would be willing to share less. Following him would do no good. She slips down an alleyway, and another.

Kiran Jade’s lair is supposed to be the east, the direction she’s already walking in. Trying to find its exact location won’t be delicate, she’ll draw attention no matter what she does. There is another Alliance operative in Albarrio, they were warned not to step foot in the north so as not to step on his mission, but she could find him and ask for his help.

Her wrist com bleeps, but it’s the Alliance demanding her return. She slaps it quiet, glancing over her shoulder- she trains the blaster on Aran’s forehead.

“The highest bidder gets him.”

Jyn blinks.

“A message went out, all bounty hunters got it.”

“How do you know?”

“I have a friend. I’m leaving now, they might look for whoever he’s been speaking to next, but I thought you should know.”

Lowering the blaster, she narrows her eyes at him. “Why didn’t you say?”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m being watched, I know that much.” He leaves without another word. 

It occurs to her he waited in the bar he met Cassian in even though he wanted to leave; he waited for her.

In the city, there isn’t enough demand for too many established bounty hunters, and the Empire didn’t take too much interest in here, so any bounty hunter that would pass on Cassian to the Empire would be from off-world and arriving soon. Following the bounty hunter would lead her straight to Cassian.

Blaster back in her holster, she changes the frequency on her wrist com and types out a message. She needs the name of whoever won the bidding war.

The other operative cusses her out, telling her she can’t contact him again and the Alliance want her back to her base. She ignores him and demands the name. He caves only to shut her up. The Empire’s lackey, codename Tarvin, carries a rare DP-23 shotgun and made a lucrative bid for the captured rebel intelligence officer.

There are a few places conducive to arriving bounty hunters on the east side of the city, but Jyn picks the spot she would have chosen. A busy hanger, pickpockets thieving from distracted merchants, plenty of places to disappear. Jyn leans against the wall, watching, but only knows she’s in the right place when the DP-23 shotgun hits her in the shoulder as the bounty hunter passes her by.

Jyn huffs, loud, but Tarvin doesn’t look back. She’s wearing a helmet, rifle slung over her shoulder, and there’s plenty of armour under nondescript clothes.

Pulling her hood up, Jyn starts several paces behind her, and follows.

They walk for nearly a mile before Jyn turns a corner around an empty street and walks straight into a blaster.

She puts her hands up, slow, and she needs a story and she needs it quick-

“Who are you?” Tarvin sounds gravelled, and she presses the blaster hard into Jyn’s stomach.

Jyn swallows. If she dies, so does Cassian. “You’re Tarvin.”

“Who are _you_?”

“Jessa.”

Tarvin raises her chin, looking down at her through the visor of her helmet. “Your real name.”

“Like I’d tell you that.”

“Why were you following me?”

Sighing, Jyn lowers her hands. “You’re better than I thought. I have a proposal.”

The blaster keeps pressed between her ribs. A shot there would breeze straight through her, probably leave a neat hole to her spine. No one would even know, they’d just find a body on the streets and clean it up.

Tarvin waits.

“I know people interested in the asset you’re about to acquire,” Jyn says. “They’re offering a lot for it.”

“Not interested.”

“This is different. This is a… special, division of the Empire. They’re after something in particular he might know, something valuable to them.”

Tarvin pauses, cocking her head. Jyn sees her neck muscle twitch, fingers adjusting their grip on the trigger. She grabs the barrel of the blaster and yanks it sideways- the bolt scorches past her.

Jyn wrenches the gun out of her hand- Tarvin smacks her in the face and knees her in the gut. The blaster clatter to the floor and Tarvin has her hand on the one in Jyn’s belt but Jyn finds Tarvin’s wrist and twists around, breaking Tarvin’s arm over her shoulder and throwing her on the ground.

Tarvin’s other hand takes Jyn’s blaster. Jyn dives behind the corner of the alley as she starts shooting, and Jyn staggers against the wall. A shot landed, the side of her waist sears with pain, but the adrenaline’s enough to ignore it. Ripping her pouch open, Jyn flicks a grenade around the corner.

The explosion’s so close she’s thrown off her feet, smashing onto the ground. Her left ear’s buzzing, deafened, and knows she has precious little time until someone investigates. 

She shoves herself back to standing, stumbling to the wall, truncheon in hand. She glances around the corner.

Ten feet from where she’d been, Tarvin’s sprawled on her stomach and unmoving.

Jyn creeps forward, eyes fixed on her, and it’s only when she’s closer that she realises the corpse in front of her is missing a leg.

Jyn thought she’d be faster.

Truncheon back in place, she reaches down and riffles through Tarvin’s pockets, pulling out a card worth 50,000 credits and a transceiver that only has one message on it- coordinates. Jyn had been counting on intercepting the bounty hunter after she’d collected Cassian.

Her wrist com bleeps again, and she slaps it quiet. The pain of the shot Tarvin made starts to warm up, as though it was waiting to burn fierce, and she presses a hand to it, biting her lip and staring at the body. A stupid plan, any plan, would do. Her com bleeps.

The com isn’t anything special, nothing that screams rebellion, except the messages. It might take a person time, but they’d be able to bypass the thumbprint encryption eventually and see the messages. Jyn’s standard-issue Alliance blaster is still in the bounty hunter’s hand.

The status of her com changed to ‘compromised’ and wrapped around the bounty hunter’s wrist, Jyn takes Tarvin’s helmet, her dead eyes staring up at Jyn, and wrestles the DP-23 off the corpse.

She sighs out a breath, long and slow, looking at the helmet. It’s scratched to hell and she’s covered in blood and there’s no turning back. She grits her teeth, jamming the helmet on.

Cassian’s waiting for her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blood and angst this chapter, fyi.

The transceiver bleeps when Jyn reaches her destination- a dusty corner of a dusty street. Her heart’s thrumming faster than she thinks her body can bear, but she leans against a nearby wall, hands in her pockets. The pretence of calm has to be convincing, so she ignores the ripping ache of her side and buzzing in her ears.

She dumped her jacket and the A180 rounds on the way. Her jacket was so obviously burnt through she might as well have announced her wound to everyone she met, but peeling her tank top off the wound was torturous. The skin over her ribs is seared off, so she wrapped her scarf around her waist and put the bounty hunter’s zip-up jacket on over it. Infection would kill her before the pain could.

The ear drum’s ruptured, too, and that’s a dizzying and painful headache, so she mopped up the blood as best she could.

Waiting leaves her nothing but time to think- she’s grateful Cassian’s not Force-sensitive. The bounty hunter might be an old friend of Kiran Jade. She might make a wrong move, the money might be fake in an attempt to play the mob, she might be too late. If Cassian knew what she’s trying to do, he might kill her himself.

After half an hour of considering that her death might never be confirmed, that no one knows where she is or what she’s doing, not even Cassian, a tall man in heavy leather walks down the street and straight to her. 

“I like your rifle.”

Jyn nods, standing up straight.

“Do you have it?”

“Do you?”

He smirks. “Course. C’mon.”

Swaggering as he walks, he knocks on a nearby door, knocking three times. The door swings open, and he heads in first. She follows. The house is not where their main operations happen- it’s bare of anything except people and a few sparse chairs. There are four thugs standing around, and one of them shuts the door behind them. 

“Kiran sends his apologies, he rather hoped to see you in person. He feels it’s very important to establish trust early on in a business relationship.”

Jyn doesn’t say anything. This isn’t Kiran Jade, and he hasn’t met the bounty hunter. 

“Can I offer you a drink?” he says as they sit on the chairs.

“You can show me the asset is as I agreed.” Bounty hunters come with stipulations.

He sniffs, grinning. “I think you and I will get on. How was your journey here?” Snapping his fingers, a thug leaves to another part of the house.

There’s a corpse with ties to the Alliance lying in the streets. If he doesn’t already know, he will. “One of his friends tried to follow me.”

The man grins. “And?”

“And she’s dead now.”

“Excellent. Another rebel?”

Jyn shrugs. “Looked like it.”

Cassian’s dragged in. Hands chained together with what looks like pressure sensitive handcuffs, he’s thrown on the ground at her feet. He takes her breath away, breathing and alive and in front of her and she can’t cry, she can’t launch herself at him, not even move, she can’t react, she’s being watched from all sides. She can feel herself shaking with the effort of doing nothing.

He pushes himself back up to his knees, glaring up at her, and spits at her feet. She waits a moment to move her feet away from him, as though the whole thing is to her distaste.

“Ah, I am sorry- he would be a little more cooperative if you didn’t want him so _intact_.” The man leans towards Cassian. “You should know, the rebellion did try to save you. One of your friends- a woman?”

Cassian doesn’t react.

“She’s dead.”

Pale with shock, eyes unseeing, Cassian doesn’t seem capable of speech. She wants to speak, enough to let him know she’s right in front of him, but even if only his body language changes it might give away her play.

Jyn shoves the 50,000 credits at the man, who looks delighted and gives her the key to Cassian’s handcuffs. She ignores the offer to shake his hand, grabbing Cassian’s upper arm and dragging him to his feet. No bounty hunter has time for pleasantries, and even if they do, Jyn doesn’t.

She can’t help but take hold of his wrist with her other hand, his pulse under her fingers, direct contact with his skin- warm, soft, the same- and she shoves him towards the door. It’s so close, freedom is so near, all she needs is him, outside, take the handcuffs off and start running-

His elbow plunges into her side and she can’t breathe the pain’s so jarring. Cassian kicks out, trying to shake her off, but she clings on and punches him in the gut. He doubles over, but she aimed too low to hit his lungs so he wouldn’t struggle to breathe, but she struggles. Breathe.

Forcing herself to breathe, her ribs anew with fresh pain, she catches sight of Cassian’s livid face. She can’t help but hold back a pained laugh. He’s ready to kill her, kill them all, and even if the Empire still gets him he’s going to punish every single one of them for it.

“Are you alright?” The man’s amused, probably by Cassian hurting.

“Fine.”

Cassian stiffens at her voice, still bent over, and she squeezes his wrist, coughing again. He’s staring at her boots- the beaten up ones he told her to throw out a long time ago.

Encouraging him to straighten up, he follows, and she tugs him off balance. He stumbles, and she jerks him back, as though he pulled against her. Safety off, she presses the blaster into Cassian’s side.

“Try that again…” she says, quiet, but it’s for the thugs’ benefit.

He follows her, her hands a guide and not a restraint for the last few steps, a new kind of tension in his arm. A thug opens the door for them, she ignores the pleasantries that are called after her, and the door shuts behind them. The urge to run is only overruled by sense.

Keeping Cassian tight at her side, she doesn’t dare stop walking and neither of them speak. She only removes the blaster when they’re streets away and she clicks the safety back on, pocketing it and leading him down an alleyway. 

Key popping the handcuffs off, Cassian lets them fall to the floor. He helps her pull the helmet off, and she’s met by his fingers tracing her jawline, eyes searching her face as thought to be sure she’s real. Shivers erupt where he touches her.

“Jyn,” he murmurs.

She closes her eyes, tears welling up. “Cassian.”

His lips press a kiss to her lips, soft and sweet, and rests his forehead against hers. She breathes him in. After a few seconds, she pulls back, wiping her eyes and stepping away.

“We need to go.” 

Hands resting on her neck, he nods, taking the blaster and they ditch the rifle, not enough ammunition and too much weight. She slips a grenade into his pocket- they have one each- and they head west.

They did nothing to him, hurting him was out of the question- the Empire wanted information and he had to have enough strength to be tortured. He says it all with a façade of composure and she chooses to not react to it, instead telling him she only came for him because she knows he’d give away all the Alliance’s secrets if the Empire discovered how ticklish he is.

It’s enough to surprise a laugh out of him.

As they walk, she presses a hand to her side, and realises it peels away wet- the skin’s broken and she’s bleeding through her top. “I really wish you hadn’t shoved me,” she says, stopping in the middle of the street to tighten the scarf around her waist.

“I didn’t know it was you, in my defence,” he says, smiling, but his face drops when he sees what she’s doing. “What-”

“I got in a fight with a bounty hunter,” she says, wincing. “She managed to get a good shot in.”

His fingers dig into his temples, holding her jacket for her. “Where was backup? They should have never let you get in that situation.”

The increasingly angry messages she received on her coms from the Alliance run through her head. “It was just me.” She takes her jacket back, shrugging it on as she walks.

Cassian hurries after her. “Wait- you don’t have backup?”

“I asked for some,” she says, “but the Alliance and I didn’t see eye to eye about your chances of survival.”

He doesn’t touch her, too careful of her side for that, but he does step out in front of her. “The Alliance told you to leave me?”

Jyn tries not to think too hard about it. “Yes.”

His jaw drops, backing hand running through his hair, reeling. “Jyn…”

“What?”

He catches her face, makes her look straight into his eyes. “Jyn, if the Alliance tells you to leave, _you leave_.” 

Like it’s that easy. She’d have had to confirm her leaving with the Alliance, turn on the engine, fly the damn shuttle- all knowing she was letting him die. She takes a deep, steadying breath. “You should know that I won’t ever leave you behind.”

“Jyn, we’re fighting for something bigger than me, you have to do as you’re told-”

Jyn shoves his hands off her. “Drop the lecture.”

“No, you should’ve left me-”

“Like you’d have done if it was me?” 

He hesitates, and he presses his lips together. “Yes.”

Jyn smiles, tired, and shakes her head, sidestepping him to keep walking. They’re not far from the storage facility where the ship’s waiting. She can’t help but be hopeful they don’t know about it- the man working for Kiran didn’t mention any missing men.

“I’m not joking-”

“No, you’re lying, so if there’s a next time-” she says, taking his hand and tugging him out of the way of a low-flying pod, “-I’ll go, and I won’t get hurt.”

They know each other too well; he can’t deny it. “You still shouldn’t have come.”

“Maybe next time.”

His smile’s reluctant, but he laces his fingers with hers. They’ll talk later. He leads her down an unfamiliar street, around the storage facility and in through a hole in a fence.

The hanger’s quiet. Jyn tugs her pouch open, her last grenade in hand, and Cassian clicks the safety off the blaster. He catches her eye, and nods once. There’s something strange in the air, a kind of quiet tension she doesn’t recognise from her days here, and they split off. Walking on either side of the path, they keep alert, steps careful. Cassian hears it, halting and holding a hand out to Jyn. 

They both listen; someone’s walking along the outer perimeter towards the gap in the fence they just came through. 

Jyn starts running, sprinting down the path between two rows of ships and on reaching the shuttle first she stabs the passcode in, pressing her thumb on the pad. It’s nearly processed-

Cassian shoves her around the side of the ship, blaster fire chasing them all the way. She grimaces, pressing her hand into her side, but Cassian doesn’t have the time to apologize and returns fire. A body hits the ground, and she forces herself to straighten up, pulling out her truncheon.

“It’s Fulcrum!” someone yells.

“What?!”

“It’s Fulcrum!”

“I thought Kiran Jade had him!”

Jyn touches Cassian’s shoulder. “I’ll go around.”

“I counted five,” he says, leaning out of cover to shoot twice. “Maybe more.”

She runs around the ship, glancing down the row between it and the next. Clearing it, she hurries to the next row, glancing down between them. Two of them found cover behind the next ship along.

Pulling the pin out with her teeth, she spits it out and hurls a grenade at them, covering her ears and crouching behind the other ship. The blast shakes the ground, and Jyn stands up, checking out the damage. They’re both down.

She turns, starting towards the next ship. All she sees is a blaster aiming at her before she throws herself back around she ship, hitting the ground hard.. She scrambles on her hands and knees, diving at her truncheon-

A foot kicks it out of her hand and the blaster touches her head. “Are you one of Fulcrum’s friends, by any chance?”

“Who?”

He grabs a fistful of her hair and moves the barrel of the gun to the back of her neck. “We sent some guys to check out his ship earlier- you haven’t seen them, have you?”

Dying like this wouldn’t be so bad. It’d hit her spine first, she wouldn’t feel a thing. “Seriously, who’s Fulcrum?”

Rolling his eyes, he snorts, dragging her down between the ships. She’s not sure what he doing until he throws out into the middle of the path, the gunfight, and trains his blaster on her. “Kneel.”

Her death might simply because of a stray shot not even intended for her now. Exposed, she could get shot from any direction. Cassian isn’t stupid. He won’t fall for this. She glares at the man, lowering herself to her knees, hands balled into fists at her side.

As the man shouts for Cassian’s attention, Jyn bows her head so he won’t be able to look her in eye. Four months wasn’t enough. There’s still so much to know about Cassian, so much to learn, parts of him she doesn’t yet understand and parts of her he’s yet to explore. She closes her eyes, and smiles. Would any number be enough?

She knows the moment Cassian sees her, because he stops firing.

“We have something of yours, Fulcrum,” the man yells. Only one of his comrades is still standing.

Jyn tunes out of his monologue, because something’s digging into her leg. Her knife.

It’s shoved down her left boot- opposite the man’s point of view, he won’t see it. She swallows, fingers riding the hem of her combat trousers, slow and careful. She can’t look up, can’t give herself away, but if he sees he’ll kill her. Once her hand finds the hilt, she inches it out.

“You can watch me blow her brains out-”

Tightening her grip, she eases it out a little more.

“-or you can come out with your hands up!”

The blade comes free, and she keeps it out of view at her side. Jyn keeps her head down, but snorts.

The man stops. “Do you want to die?”

“He’s more valuable than me. And he knows you’ll kill me anyway.”

“Oh really?” He takes a couple of steps towards her, still covered from Cassian’s fire.

“Yes.” She looks up, and the blaster’s inches from her face. Stupid.

Grabbing it, she yanks it down in front of her, enough to throw him off balance and kick his legs out from underneath him. He slams on his side, and with one hand pinning the blaster down she slashes his throat open. Blood drenches her. She lurches back, wiping it out of her eye.

Three more shots scorch through the air.

The last man crumples, dying before he can pull the trigger and shoot her. Cassian lowers his blaster, and the hanger falls quiet.

Taking the blaster out of the dead man’s hand, knife shoved in her belt, she clambers to her feet. Cassian starts towards her, but she shakes her head and jogs to the shuttle. He punches the code in and gives his own thumbprint, and the door begins to lower itself as she reaches him.

“Are you alright?” he says, blaster loose at his side.

She mops up some of blood with the front of her shirt. “Yes.”

A wave of exhaustion rolls over her, leaning against the side of the shuttle, and she might sleep for days, she thinks, stepping onto the ship.

She stops.

Inside is a massacre. She forgot, she didn’t warn him, but she barely thought about it when she left. Three greying corpses left where they fell, bloody footprints tracked through the ship and dried where the pool of it hasn’t, and the smell is nauseating. Choking down bile, she doesn’t look at Cassian.

“They came in to raid the ship. I… I’ll move them. Get us ready to fly.”

He steps over the bodies to get to the cockpit, saying nothing. Throwing her jacket aside, she rolls the bodies onto the bedsheet and drags them off the ship, kicking the last one off and slamming the button to shut the cargo bay door. Cassian doesn’t say a word until she’s picked her way across the floor, avoiding stepping straight into the puddles of blood, and straps herself into the co-pilot’s seat. 

“Ready?”

Reaching out for the controls, even the back of her left hand is spattered with blood. She takes the controls. “Let’s go.”

***

Less than twenty minutes later, they come to rest in the Alliance hanger. Most of the pilots, crew, mechanics, don’t even look up, cleaning and fixing and talking. Jyn stares down at them.

Cassian slips out of his seat and unbuckles her belt for her.

He’s got a scratch next to his eye, like he was hit with something, and he’s filthy with dust. It clings to his hair and gathers in the wrinkles in his shirt, and he doesn’t seem to notice, but otherwise he looks the same as when they left.

Jyn could have just clambered out of any person’s darkest nightmare. She doesn’t know how to look at Cassian. Blood’s smudged on her face, set in her hair and clothes and sticky on her skin. Her side is still bleeding, sluggish through her blackened top, and the pain crept up on her as they flew. The scarf rubs against the raw skin every time she moves.

Cassian helps her stand, and she reaches down to the tight knot of the scarf. After a few moments of her struggling, he crouches in front of her and takes over, quick to undo it. She forces herself to stay still while he unwinds her, but her knuckles are white and face crumpled with the effort of not screaming. 

Easing the last layer off the wound, he murmurs an apology and discards the scarf, steadying her.

When her breathing’s slowed, he guides her chin up to look at him. “Thank you for saving my life,” he says. It’s the kiss he presses to her forehead, tender and sweet, that makes her push him off.

He sees her he sees her like this, she didn’t do it for the rebellion or because they were her orders but because she wanted to, it was her choice, she did this-

She can’t bear to look at him and see if he came away with blood on him too.

Stumbling out of the shuttle and into the hanger, she ignores Cassian calling her name, but she stops five steps out the ship anyway.

Heat rises on the back of her neck as people stop, catching sight of her and staring. One pilot’s jaw drops, another gasps.

Cassian puts his hand on her upper back, steering her through the crowd. He barks at someone to let the medical bay they’re coming, and she runs off ahead of them. The medic doesn’t even flinch at the state of her, taking a DNA sample to grow new tissue and replace the skin on her waist, assuring her that she won’t feel the procedure. 

Lips a tight line, Cassian stays by her side the entire time. He holds her hand while they give her local anaesthetic and sterilise the wound, watches while they check her ear even though there’s little they can do for it, helps her change into the medical gown they provide, sees the operation out and when their commanding officer arrives he sees her straight back out again.

“Now is not the time,” is all he says.

Eventually, of course, she has to face what she did. Orders are given for a reason, she’s told. Does she understand that?

“I understand that, as a sentient being, it’s a point of privilege that I can continue throughout my life to choose what orders I accept.” She won’t apologize for Cassian’s life.

In the corner of the room, he smacks a hand over his face.

Hours later, they’re finally given privacy. He can’t say no to her when she asks him to climb in the cot next to her even though her new skin isn’t quite settled.

She rests her head on his chest and he wraps her in his arms.

She’s certain he’s going to ask what happened, but he talks. He tells her some of the things he’s done in the name of the rebellion. People he’s killed, betrayed, thrown to the Empire to stop them talking. Parts of himself he can’t he ashamed of, because he helped the rebellion, but he is ashamed of anyway.

He waits, letting what he’s said sink in, then steels himself and looks at her. “Do you feel differently about me? Knowing all that?”

She shakes her head.

“When you want to talk, I will be here.” He kisses her hand, and tells her she needs to sleep. He starts humming something soft in her ear; it’s like a lullaby.

His faith in is the ideals of a future built on the back of the Alliance, the defeat of the Empire, and a rebellion that will change the future of the galaxy. He’s not sure he’ll live to see it, but that doesn’t matter to him.

Her faith is in him. None of it matters unless he’s with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not 100% convinced this is as polished as I'd like, but I really do have work to be doing. Hope you all liked it!

**Author's Note:**

> I be like 'I've got deadlines in 8 days, I definitely need to be writing fanfiction and not my essays'


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